CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Credit-card debt has been falling for 16 straight months but consumers aren't paying off their financial obligations as much you might think. Instead, they're walking away from the debt, forcing credit-card issuers to write off as much as 90% of that reported drop, according to a new report by CardHub.com.

U.S. banks charged off a record $83.3 billion in credit-card losses last year. That makes up the bulk of the $93.2 billion drop in outstanding credit-card debt that was reported by the Federal Reserve for 2009.

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"The reduction in credit-card debt is not because consumers have found a bag of cash under their mattresses and are now paying down their debt," said Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of CardHub.com.

Papadimitriou drilled down into the Federal Reserve data detailing the declining consumer-debt levels. While the numbers painted a picture of frugality and fiscal conservatism, Papadimitriou was baffled, considering the high numbers of cash-strapped consumers and the now 9.7% jobless rate.

"When consumers are paying off more than they usually do, that's a time of financial health," he said.

What Papadimitriou found was this: Last year, outstanding credit-card debt dropped an eye-popping $93.2 billion to about $876 billion, according to Federal Reserve data, which are not seasonally adjusted. During the same period, charge-offs -- the unsecured debt the banks determine they won't get back and charge off to loss reserves -- added up to $83.3 billion.

In other words, only about $10 billion of the drop is attributable to consumers paying off their debt.

Robert Hammer, chief executive of investment bank R.K. Hammer, said when credit charge-offs are exceeding receivables, the impact is clear.

"For the first time in my 30 years in this business, the dollar amount of card loans finished the year lower than they started," he said. "That would mean that consumers have either put their credit cards in a safe-deposit box and only get them out for special occasions or that some are cutting them up and not using them at all. And we don't think any of that is going on."

Overall credit-card charge-offs as charted by Moody's Credit Card Index shot up to 11.15% in January, compared with 10.32% in December. Moody's expects charge-offs to peak at close to 12% over the next several months, eclipsing an all-time high of 11.5% in August.

If there is a silver lining, it's that there are some signs that the rate of late payments -- those 30 days past due -- is starting to slow. Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender, reported that 7.35% of accounts were past due in January, the lowest level in a year.

"In the coming months we'll see clearly if consumers have learned their lessons in lowering their debt levels," Papadimitriou said.

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